


Trip Me Up

by JacarandaBanyan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bingo Fill, Bot Family, DUM-E is just learning how to be a bot, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, MIT Era, Platypus Slippers, Robot Feels, Tony Stark Bingo 2020, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22407262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: Tony's at MIT and has only recently finished building DUM-E. The bot still has trouble with basic motor skills, though, and so to make him feel better about his skills Tony buys Rhodey the most ridiculous, hard-to-walk-in slippers he can find.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark
Comments: 22
Kudos: 186
Collections: IronHusbands, Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	Trip Me Up

**Author's Note:**

> For Tony Stark Bingo, square A5- Robot Family, card #3004
> 
> This fic was inspired by a pair of platypus slippers my sister got me for Christmas that I love to death.

Tony loved DUM-E, but the little robot was not very good at being a robot. 

It wasn’t DUM-E’s fault, of course. Tony was the one who’d made him a learning bot, when he  _ knew _ how much time you had to sink into teaching learning bots how to do basic things. It would have been easier if he’d made a learning AI, perhaps, since he could have set it to do learning exercises by itself for hundreds of hours, but he’d wanted a cute little robot lab assistant, so now he had to pay the price. 

‘You can do it, Buddy, come to Daddy. All you’ve gotta do is turn a little bit and wheel  _ around _ the table.”

DUM-E’s camera pointed promisingly at the table. That was progress, at least. In the beginning he’d just been so focused on Tony that he hadn’t bothered to look for obstacles. 

“There you go, that’s great. See where the table is? You’ve gotta move to the side just a little bit to the left, and you’ll be able to pass it.”

DUM-E’s grasping claw wiggled a bit, then descended to wrap around the lip of the table.

“What are you- no, DUM-E, you can’t pick the table up and move it, it’s welded to the floor. And we’re not practicing lifting objects, we’re practicing moving  _ around _ objects.”

DUM-E made a pitiful beeping noise and unclasped his claw from the table. Instead of turning his wheels and moving eighteen inches to the left, however, he lowered his arm as close to horizontal as he possibly could. 

“You look like a sauropod, DUM-E. Come on, what’s with the long neck, I thought you dinosaur-imitation phase was over.”

DUM-E beeped happily and started rolling straight ahead. 

His body crashed right into the table, stalling him in his tracks. His happy beeps turned frustrated. 

“Yeah, I already told you it was too short for you to go under, buddy. You’re gonna have to go around.”

The lab doors whooshed open behind him, but he didn’t turn around. Only a few other students used this lab, but they mostly used it in the evenings, finishing up loose ends on their own personal projects. It was fast approaching 2 AM now, so there was only one person it could be. 

“See DUM-E, your Uncle Rhodey is here to cheer you on! All you gotta do is roll  _ around _ the table, and he’ll give you some pets.”

A warm arm wrapped around his shoulders from behind. 

“Yeah, DUM-E, I’m right here with Tones, just waiting to tell you how great you did.”

Tony leaned back against Rhodey’s chest, letting his full weight rest against his ribs. Rhodey just chuckled and let him do it. 

“If you’re getting too sleepy to support your own weight, then you should probably head to bed Tones.”

Tony pouted dramatically. 

“Is that the real reason you’re here? To shuffle me off to bed and leave DUM-E dejected and unaccomplished for another night?”

“It’s late, Tony, and you have a morning class tomorrow.”

“Nothing coffee can’t pull me through.”

“Tony, sleep is important-”

“And so is DUM-E! He’ll be so dejected if I go now. Come on, Platypus, just until he figures out this turn!”

Rhodey’s little huffing laugh vibrated through his chest and into Tony’s back. 

“Okay. Do you promise? DUM-E gets around that table, you go right to bed?”

Tony held his hand dramatically to his heart. 

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Good. Hey DUM-E, want some help from your old pal Uncle Rhodey?”

He stepped out from behind Tony, leaving him windmilling his arms to catch his balance without the secure wall of Rhodey’s body to hold him up. 

DUM-E perked up as Rhodey walked around the table to where he stood, confounded by the horrors of three-dimensional geometry. If Tony had had a camera on him, he would’ve been pressing the picture-button as fast as he could so he could properly capture the scene for later. 

Rhodey put his hand on DUM-E’s strut and gestured at Tony. 

“Your dad over there wants you to figure it out for yourself because he thinks that’s how all good little robots learn best. That’s not his fault, though, so don’t hold it against him. He’s just used to other people expecting him to learn everything by himself, without any help at all. And he’s a genius, so he does pretty okay at that. But guys like you and me, we need to be guided every once in a while. So how about I put my hand on you like this, and you go where I push you?”

Tony groaned, realizing Rhodey’s game. 

“Come on honeybunch, that’s cheating!”

Rhodey just smiled. 

“Okay, feel how I’m pushing you to the left? That’s the direction you’ve gotta wheel yourself.”

“That so doesn’t count, you’re just pushing him like a shopping cart! It only counts if he wheels himself under his own power!” Tony whined. 

“That’s not what you promised. You promised you’d go to bed as soon as DUM-E got around the table.”

DUM-E beeped triumphantly as Rhodey pushed him around the edge of the table. As soon as he had a straight shot at Tony, he did a little spin on his wheels and charged right at him. 

“Oof! DUM-E, please, your Daddy is not as heavy as some silly little bots I could name. New rule, no knocking over Daddy.”

DUM-E trilled happily and butted up against his hip like a big cat asking for affection. Tony gave him a pat on the stabilizer, then wheeled him over to his charging station. 

“You better remember what Mr. Cheater over there taught you tomorrow, DUM-E, so I can see you do it all by yourself.”

DUM-E made a little nod-like movement with his camera, and obediently curled up so he didn’t take up quite so much room in the corner. 

* * *

He did manage it the next day, though it took him a couple of tries to figure out how far he needed to go to clear the table corner. Tony did a little victory dance when he finally managed it, and forced Rhodey to join him when it looked like he might just stand there like a stiffatronian and applaud politely. 

DUM-E, of course, tried to copy Tony’s dance, only to go spinning out of control and collapse on his side.

Tony immediately rushed to his side. 

“Hey, hey, what happened there Buddy? I thought I’d finally made you stable enough to avoid stuff like this.”

DUM-E beeped miserably and spun his upturned wheels in the air. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll set you right. Sourpatch, come help me lift him up. He’s like a million pounds since I added all that stuff on the bottom. It was  _ supposed _ to be stabilizing, but I guess I’ll have to revisit that later.”

Between the two of them they managed to heave DUM-E back up first at an angle that rested his weight on his wheels, then fully upright again. Tony was pretty sure he’d pulled something in his back, but DUM-E’s happy-relieved trills kept him from saying anything about it. 

Rhodey and Tony collapsed onto the nearby beanbag couch some long-graduated senior had left behind for future generations of lab students. 

“You’re gonna have to come up with a better stabilization system than just making him bottom heavy, Tony,” Rhodey groaned, hands rubbing over his lower back. “Anything else. Install a retractable crane or something, just don’t make him one ounce heavier.”

“Sure thing,” Tony panted. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

“What was with the sudden athletics, DUM-E?” Rhodey wheezed at the robot, who had rolled over (in a straight line) to check on them. “Just a minute ago you could barely make a turn, now you’re spinning like a ballerina. What’s with the one-eighty there?”

DUM-E tilted his camera and claw towards the floor apologetically. 

“Ugh, I think it was our victory dance,” Tony said. “He wanted to join in, but he messed up and lost control.”

DUM-E beeped in confirmation. 

“It’s okay, DUM-E,” Rhodey said. “You’ll get there eventually. It took Tony and I over a year to learn how to walk. Maybe hold off on the tricky stuff for now though, okay?”

DUM-E gave a squeaky nod, and Tony groaned about having to oil his joints all over again, and Rhodey assumed the whole thing was forgotten. 

* * *

It took DUM-E a little longer to get over it than they’d originally thought. 

Tony ended up having to put a temporary ban on victory dances, which sent DUM-E into a pouting session every time. He beeped sadly and got distracted any time someone left the lab TV going on some sort of dance program or contest, and had taken any subsequent turning failures much harder than he had before. 

In the privacy of their dorm, Tony was pretty worried about him. Whenever the two of them found time to go out on a date, or even just cuddle up and hang out together, Tony inevitably brought up how down DUM-E had been over the whole thing. 

Rhodey consoled DUM-E whenever he dropped by the lab that he was just learning, and that he had all semester to get there, but DUM-E didn’t want to take ‘you were literally born just this semester’ as an excuse for not being able to dance with them. 

Hopefully it would all work it self out in time. 

* * *

One week and many DUM-E failures later, Rhodey got an email from campus mail telling him he had a package available for pickup. 

He hadn’t ordered anything in the past six months, and his mom usually told him when she was sending him care packages to make sure he didn’t dawdle on his way to pick them up and let the cookies get hard and stale, so it wasn’t from her. 

He went to pick it up anyways. It was just bad manners to leave packages in mail room limbo forever, even if you weren’t expecting one. He used the code included in the email, picked up the box, and brought it back to his dorm to open up. 

The box itself was pretty big, well over the average package size. There wasn’t a recognizable shipping address, but there was a sticker with a website name on it and an assurance that there was a message from the sender inside. It was surprisingly light, like it was full of feathers, and when he shook it he couldn’t hear any tell-tale metal pieces rolling around inside. There was nothing labeling it as fragile, either. 

When he got back to his and Tony’s shared dorm, Tony was out as usual. A sticky note on the door said that Tony was planning to keep working with DUM-E until dinner, then go back after dinner, and not to wait up for him. Rhodey rolled his eyes and threw the note in the trash. As if he’d ever turn in without waiting for Tony to get back safe and sound. 

There was so much tape holding the packaging together that in some places it was easier just to cut through the cardboard, but he eventually extracted something fuzzy from inside. 

It was a pair of platypus slippers. 

Rhodey stared at the slippers. They were shaped with a hole in the middle of the back for a foot, and a head, thick beaver-tail, and four cute little clawed feet sticking out the sides. Each lightly upturned head had a little plush duck bill and soulful glass eyes. It was like a stuffed animal he could wear as a slipper. 

A note fell out of the box. 

> _ Hey Platypus~! _
> 
> _ I bought some new labwear for you, I hope you like it. I thought they fit you perfectly, and they’ll keep your feet warm on those cold lab floors.  _
> 
> _ Love, _
> 
> _ Tony _

Rhodey rolled his eyes. Honestly, he should have realized this was Tony’s tomfoolery immediately. 

* * *

Tony leaped to his feet the second Rhodey walked through the door. 

“Sourpatch, why aren’t you wearing the slippers?”

“Tony, those things are impossible to walk in. I almost fell to my death tripping on the stairs. They’re just too long and awkwardly shaped. Even when I tried them on in the dorm, a  _ flat, open surface, _ I had to take wider steps because the little paws on the sides kept hitting each other.”

Tony planted a kiss on his cheek. 

“Come on honey, I know you brought them. I promise, you’ll grow to like them, you just need to get used to walking in them. Besides, aren’t they the cutest slippers you’ve ever seen in your life?”

“They were pretty cute,” he admitted. “That doesn’t change the fact that everything that makes them cute also makes them ridiculously impractical.”

“Okay, but did you bring them?”

Rhodey  _ had _ in stuffed them into his backpack before coming, because he was a grade-A sucker. 

Tony badgered him into putting them on again, which he did out of the  _ goodness of his heart, _ and then walked over to where DUM-E was now working on picking up small round objects. 

And promptly tripped over those silly stuffed duck bills. 

Tony caught him before he face planted on the concrete floor. 

“Having a little trouble there, Rhodey-bear?” He asked with an insufferable grin. 

“Of course I am, these things are designed to be impossible to walk in! Unless you pick your leg straight up you’re inevitably going to be hitting either the tail or the head, or one of those little paws- Tony, why did they include the claws on the paws? They make them at least another twenty percent longer. Seriously, who thought little cloth platypus claws were a good idea?”

“Probably because platypuses have venomous claws, and you can’t just leave something like that out. Well, technically venomous ankle spurs, but you know. Same difference.”

“Platypuses have- of course they do. Of course. I should have guessed.”

DUM-E wheeled over to say hi, small round objects forgotten in a small heap on the lab table. 

“See DUM-E,” Tony said cheerfully, “walking is sometimes hard for Honeybear and Daddy as well. Did you see how he almost fell over just like you?”

DUM-E beeped excitedly. 

“Yeah, it happens to everyone. So you don’t have to be upset about a little tip-over, okay?”

DUM-E made a whole bunch of happy noises all at once, and sped off back to his exercises with new energy. 

Rhodey turned to Tony. 

“Did you buy me novelty slippers just to see me trip and cheer up DUM-E?”

“Not  _ just _ for that. I thought they were pretty cute.”

He laughed. 

“Well, they are pretty warm. I’ll give them that.”

Over in his corner, DUM-E successfully lifted the little rubber ball, and did a slow, careful victory spin. 


End file.
